Monday, January 30, 2012

A surprising number of people seem unaware of the boycott of The Sun by supporters of Liverpool Football Club. Some don’t seem to know it is boycotted, others don’t know why. Some people rather disturbingly know why the boycott exists but still choose to buy it.

If you choose to continue to buy The Sun after reading this article, and the articles it links to, then you ought to stop calling yourself a Liverpool supporter. Collect any shirts or scarves you have, and hand them in to a charity shop. In fact you can’t really call yourself a football supporter. The lies printed in The Sun that you will read about below were aimed at Liverpool supporters, people from Liverpool, people from the North of England, football supporters of any club. If you fall into any of those categories you certainly shouldn’t be buying, reading, or visiting the website of that newspaper. If you are a decent human being you will be steering clear of it from now on, even if you’ve not done so before.

If you buy the paper regularly already, print off all of this information, and save your money tomorrow. Read these articles instead. If you still want to buy that paper the following day I would be surprised.

The boycott of The Sun goes back to April 1989, over 20 years ago. On April 15th 1989 a disaster took place which resulted in the deaths of ninety-six Liverpool supporters at Hillsborough, the home ground of Sheffield Wednesday, during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Ninety-six people had their lives crushed out of them. Many more are said to have ended their own lives since as a consequence of that disaster. A lot of injustices came out of that disaster, far too many to list here. For more information visit the Hillsborough Justice Campaign website at http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough and please try to support them...read more

On Saturday morning, the policearrested four journalists who have worked for Rupert Murdoch. For a while, it looked as though these were yet more arrests of people related to the News of the World but then it became clear that this was something much more significant.

This may be the moment when the scandal that closed the NoW finally started to pose a potential threat to at least one of Murdoch's three other UK newspaper titles: the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times.

The four men arrested on Saturday are not linked to the NoW. They come from the Sun, from the top of the tree – the current head of news and his crime editor, the former managing editor and deputy editor.

Nothing is certain. No one has been convicted of anything. The four who were arrested on Saturday – like the 25 others before them – have not even been charged with any offence. But behind the scenes, something very significant has changed at News International.

Under enormous legal and political pressure, Murdoch has ordered that the police be given everything they need.

Whereas Scotland Yard began their inquiry a year ago with nothing much more than the heap of scruffy paperwork seized from the NoW's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, Murdoch's Management and Standards Committee has now handed them what may be the largest cache of evidence ever gathered by a police operation in this country, including the material that led to Saturday's arrests.

And technicians have retrieved an enormous reservoir of material from News International's central computer servers, including one particularly vast collection that may yet prove to be the stick that breaks the media mogul's back.

It is known as Data Pool 3.

It contains several hundred million emails sent and received over the years by employees of the News of the World – and of the three other Murdoch titles.

Data Pool 3 is so big that the police are not even attempting to read every message. Instead, there are two teams searching it for key words: a detective sergeant with five detective constables from Scotland Yard working secretly on criminal leads; and 32 civilians working for the Management and Standards Committee, providing information for the civil actions brought by public figures and for the Leveson inquiry and passing relevant material to police....read more

Imagine you're a Fleet Street reporter at a British tabloid with a pocketful of cash. You meet a trusted source at a pub, a police officer who tells you about the royal family's confidential schedule in exchange for a small gratuity. You hand over a few quid and rush off with a photographer to stake out a health club where Camilla Parker-Bowles is toning her abs.

Guess what: If you work for Rupert Murdoch, you may have violated U.S. law. What the government nails you for could depend on how you and your bosses account for the sketchy deal with the cop.

If you're entirely honest in the company's internal books and enter the payment as a "bribe," you've just created an irrefutable piece of evidence that can be used against you and your company in a prosecution by the Justice Department for violating U.S. statutes against overseas bribery. If, as is more likely, you file an expense account which refers to the cash payment as "taxis” or "office supplies," you stand a chance of being pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for keeping fake records...read more

Four current and former senior Sun journalists and one serving policeofficer have been arrested as part of Scotland Yard's investigation into police corruption.

The Metropolitan police have also launched a search atNews International's headquarters in Wapping in a bid to secure any potential evidence relating to alleged payments to police by journalists.

Officers were accompanied by lawyers who arrived at the Sun's offices between 6am and 8am this morning. They are there to ensure "journalist privilege" in relation to sources is not compromised.

It is the first time since the phone-hacking scandal erupted that the Sun has been targeted in such a major way but sources stress the dawn raid has nothing to do with voicemail interception and solely relates to paying police for stories.

The four Sun employees arrested are understood to be Mike Sullivan, the Sun's crime editor, the former managing editor Graham Dudman, the executive editor Fergus Shanahan and Chris Pharo, a news desk executive.

The arrests came after information was passed to the police by News Corporation's internal investigations unit, the Management and Standards Committee. It was set up in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that erupted last July by Rupert Murdoch and operates independently of News International.

It is understood staff and management at the Sun had no warning of the police plans to make arrests or to conduct a search at the paper's newsroom.

A statement from News Corp in New York said: "Metropolitan police service (MPS) officers from Operation Elveden today arrested four current and former employees from The Sun newspaper. Searches have also taken place at the homes and offices of those arrested.

"News Corporation made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated.

"It commissioned the Management and Standards Committee (MSC) to undertake a review of all News International titles, regardless of cost, and to proactively co-operate with law enforcement and other authorities if potentially relevant information arose at those titles.

"As a result of that review, which is ongoing, the MSC provided information to the Elveden investigation which led to today's arrests.

"No comment can be made on the nature of that information to avoid prejudicing the investigation and the rights of individuals."

The Management and Standards Committee has been charged with ridding the company of old practices and illegal activities such as phone hacking which led to the abrupt closure of the News of the World after 168 years last July.

One source said. "They are there to drain the swamp."

Scotland Yard confirmed in a statement that the investigation "relates to suspected payments to police officers and is not about seeking journalists to reveal confidential sources in relation to information that has been obtained legitimately."

Three of the four journalists were arrested before 8am on Saturday morning while the fourth was arrested mid morning, it is understood.

"Home addresses of those arrested are currently being searched and officers are also carrying out a number of searches at the offices of News International in Wapping, East London. These searches are expected to conclude this afternoon," the Met said in a statement.

A source said police were interested in everything from "notepads, emails, Post-it notes".

All four men were being questioned at police stations in Essex and London, police said. Twelve people have so far been arrested under Operation Elveden.

The operation is being supervised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and is being run in conjunction with Operation Weeting, the MPS inquiry into the phone hacking of voicemail boxes.

It was launched after officers were handed documents suggesting that News International journalists made illegal payments to police officers.

Others questioned as part of the inquiry include the former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, the ex-Downing Street communications chief Andy Coulson, the former News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner, the paper's former royal editor Clive Goodman, the former News of the World crime editor Lucy Panton and the Sun district editor, Jamie Pyatt.

Brooks and Coulson are both former editors of the News of the World, which was closed in July at the height of the hacking scandal following revelations that the murdered teenager Milly Dowler's phone was hacked.

Deborah Glass, the deputy chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, said: "It will be clear from today's events that this investigation is following the evidence.

"I am satisfied with the strenuous efforts being made by this investigation to identify police officers who may have taken corrupt payments, and I believe the results will speak for themselves."

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Please remember as you plod through this that all of these news articles were based on one and only one *fellow diner* at the Carvi restaurant. The *fellow diner* is important! He or she was used by the British Press to significantly manipulate public opinion against the Portuguese police.

Friday, January 20, 2012

I would find it very hard to believe that Murdoch is NOT involved in this

The amazing Carroll Foundation Charitable Trust billion dollar offshore tax evasion fraud scandal sweeping Wall Street New York and the City of London has also recently revealed that the Queen's bankers Coutts & Co deliberately concealed a shocking litany of forensic evidential material in this case of international importance.

Further sources have said the Coutts Bank Chairman Lord Home is also deeply implicated in this great British society scandal following further media reports which have cited Lord Home and the former Vice Chairman of Coutts Lord Hurd who was the UK Government's Foreign Secretary in the Sir John Major premiership.

In a stunning twist it has emerged that the UK Government's powerful MI6 foreign security service is also involved following leaked sources disclosing that the Carroll Trust's Carroll Aircraft Corporation was located at the former HM Ministry of Defence high security establishment at Farnborough Airport Hampshire. It is understood that the FBI Scotland Yard dossiers contain forged and falsified UK Companies House registered Carroll Aircraft Corporation evidential material which also triggered this trans-national crime syndicate operation.

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson has put his house up for sale, reports Guido Fawkes. The estate agent's asking price for the five-bedroomed Victorian detached house in south London is £1,625,000.

On 21 December, Coulson lost his high court bid to force News Group Newspapers to pay his potential legal costs over the phone hacking affair. The judge also ordered Coulson to pay NGN's costs and refused him permission to appeal.

Coulson resigned as David Cameron's director of communications in January last year and is not thought to have worked since.

He was arrested and bailed on 8 July by the Metropolitan police in connection with conspiracy to unlawfully intercept communications and payments to police officers. He has consistently denied allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

Coulson recently attended the funeral for Daily Mirror columnist Sue Carroll and was also a guest at a party to celebrate the release of the movie W.E.

Brooks and Coulson used to be close friends. When she was briefly detained by police in November 2005 after a domestic dispute with her then husband, Ross Kemp, it was Coulson who turned up to offer assistance at the police station.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

In 2009, the Times "outed" an anonymous blogger. It was a strange exercise at the time. A "quality" newspaper devoted its resources to forcing into the public domain the identity of the author of the popular and extremely well-written police blog known as "NightJack". As Paul Waugh and others noted as it happened, it was somewhat weird and unfortunate that a newspaper which should respect anonymity as a condition for providing useful information was exposing an anonymous writer providing useful information.

Not only did the Times seek to expose the blogger, they even went to the High Court to defend an attempt by the blogger to protect his anonymity. In a detailed witness statement of 56 paragraphs and with 56 pages of exhibits, the journalist purported to show how using considerable investigative skill and amazing detective work he was able to use minute details over several blogposts to piece together the identity of the blogger. Anyone reading this remarkable witness statement gets a sense that the journalist not only deserved his scoop, he also probably deserved a Pulitzer. ....read more

James Harding, editor of the Times, told the Leveson inquiry that the reporter who hacked Nightjack's email had been issued with a formal written warning for professional misconduct. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

A controversial 2009 Times article "outing" an anonymous police blogger called Nightjack was based on material obtained by email hacking, it has emerged in evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

Times editor James Harding told the inquiry on Tuesday he had disciplined the reporter involved for accessing the email account by giving him a written warning.

He said in a witness statement: "There was an incident where the newsroom was concerned that a reporter had gained unauthorised access to an email account. When it was brought to my attention, the journalist faced disciplinary action. The reporter believed he was seeking to gain information in the public interest but we took the view he had fallen short of what was expected of a Times journalist. He was issued with a formal written warning for professional misconduct."

Times sources subsequently identified the reporter as a 24-year-old former graduate trainee, Patrick Foster. They said he openly disclosed that he guessed security questions for an anonymous email account run by a Lancashire detective, Richard Horton. Horton failed in a subsequent legal bid to protect his anonymity, andthe Times "outed" the constable in June 2009. Horton's blog, which won the prestigious Orwell prize for its descriptions of a PC's life, was closed down and he was reprimanded by his police superiors.

Harding did not disclose the reporter's identity in his Leveson statement, nor did he reveal that the hacking had led to a published Times article. The Times did not state in its original story that the blogger's identity had been obtained by penetrating Horton's Hotmail account. It said Foster had "deduced" Nightjack's identity.

Earlier witness statements, by News International's chief executive Tom Mockridge and the Times' lawyer Simon Toms, did not disclose that unauthorised email access had resulted in a published article. They referred only to "attempted" access allegedly denied by the reporter. Mockridge later corrected his statement.

The "outing" of Nightjack stirred up controversy at the time, with some bloggers arguing that it was morally wrong to expose a writer and thus close down a widely-valued publication.

Foster, who has declined to speak about the affair, maintained at the time that his action was justified in the public interest because Horton had given details of sex attacks in his blog which could be traced to individual incidents, and had therefore revealed details which should have been kept confidential.

In his amended statement, Mockridge said Foster had subsequently been "dismissed following an unrelated incident". Foster has subsequently written freelance articles for both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph.

Lord Justice Leveson has one of the least enviable jobs in public life. His assignment is to adjudicate between the demand for privacy and the principle of free speech. He must do so against the backdrop of a public outcry, an unfinished criminal investigation and a galloping technological revolution.

He has taken evidence from comedians making serious points and some serious people behaving like comedians. He has heard many different arguments. Today, the inquiry is hearing from The Times. This seems the appropriate moment to make clear to our readers the newspaper’s view on the future of the press.

We make two points above all. The first is that we believe in the freedom of the press and argue that preserving this freedom requires resisting any form of statutory regulation. The second is a more ambitious, optimistic argument. The report of the Leveson inquiry, for all the inauspicious circumstances of its establishment, can prove to be a positive moment, one where Britain gains both a better and a freer press.

It can ensure that newspapers treat people better; it should take a firm view on questions such as prior notification, the publication of corrections and the independent oversight of the press. It must also ensure that the pursuit of stories in the public interest is more robustly protected, with a clear defence that applies to all the laws that govern information gathering.

The phone-hacking scandal
The phone-hacking scandal has exposed a number of unpleasant truths about the press. It appears that the News of the World routinely used illegal means to unearth stories of questionable, if any, public interest.

As the evidence of wrongdoing came to light, News International, Rupert Murdoch’s company that also owns The Times, was unable or unwilling to police itself. This was a disgrace.

It was, of course, the press that put Fleet Street in the dock. The dogged investigative reporting that unearthed the phone-hacking scandal deserves respect, even if the story was exaggerated and key details misreported. The Leveson inquiry was a necessary response to the public indignation over the phone-hacking scandal and the broader concerns about privacy and the power of the press.

Freedom of speech
The starting point of The Times is that liberty is guaranteed by freedom of speech. A free press and a people free to express themselves are the best checks on the behaviour of the rich and the powerful. The value of journalism is to tell many people what few people know. The public has more to fear from secrecy than to gain from privacy. A muffled press does not make for a quieter world, but for a cacophony of rumour.

This newspaper is therefore an unrelenting advocate of press freedom. It is an implacable opponent of government oversight — direct or indirect — of the press. Journalists should question politicians, not answer to them. There should be no price for critical coverage, no prize for currying favour. The Times never wants its journalists to walk into Downing Street, or any other government office, thinking that it would be prudent to stay on the right side of the minister.

This translates into a deep-seated opposition to any form of state regulation of the press. If any future regulator is run, overseen, empowered or appointed by government, then politicians will loom over the press.

A statutory backstop to independent regulation would either be meaningless or it would mean government regulation. And even a rewriting of the regulatory system recognised by an Act of Parliament has its dangers: a Leveson Act would give Westminster a mechanism for legal control over the press. If MPs decide they do not like the press they are getting, they could easily amend the Act. It gives politicians a foot in the door.

The internet
There is another, more practical reason to avoid state regulation. The ground is shifting. So much news is not published by newspapers, but put out on the web by people who are free, unregulated and largely beyond the reach of the law.

The obvious danger for Lord Justice Leveson is that he tackles the printing press, just as its power is waning, but skirts the issue of the internet. This could further disadvantage professional newsrooms: newspapers may well have a smaller readership than a blog, a tweet or a Facebook page, but still have to cross a higher threshold to publish. It would also make the whole exercise of the Leveson inquiry redundant — like issuing a road safety manual for the horse and carriage the same year that Henry Ford brings out the Model T.

The public and the press
That said, it is clearly time for a meaningful intervention rebalancing the relationship between the public and the press. There needs to be a new set of rules put in place to ensure that newspapers treat people better.

People who are misrepresented or mistreated by newspapers deserve quick and easy access to a meaningful form of redress. Corrections should be in a regular, prominent place. Editors should be willing to remedy a substantial mistake on the front page by at least flagging a correction on the front page. And it would be helpful if the regulator posted newspaper corrections on its website and circulated them to all editors and newsdesks.

Newspapers should contact the person or institution that they are writing about before the story runs. This is for reasons of decency — it is better to tell something unpleasant to someone’s face than go behind their back; it is for reasons of accuracy — you want to know their side of the story; and it is for reasons of fairness — it gives them a chance to inform friends, family and colleagues of negative coverage to come.

Editors must be able to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life made without prior notification. Such notification should be considered best practice, rather than be made obligatory. This is not just because obligation might produce a surge in attempted injunctions. It might also make it impossible to publish: for instance, the subject of the story could switch their phone off, meaning the journalist cannot notify them and the paper cannot publish.

Independent regulation
A new set of rules requires a new guardian of the rules. The regulator of the press needs to have the confidence of the public. And this simply does not exist at the moment.

There has to be a major change. We propose a move from self-regulation to independent regulation. Journalists cannot go on marking their own homework. News organisations can no longer set the rules of the regulator or appoint the people on it. Their only role must be to pay for it, and to respect its judgment.

The new regulator needs to be more than just a clearing house for complaints: it needs to have investigative and punitive powers too. This means launching inquiries where there is credible third- party evidence of wrongdoing. Where the regulator’s findings suggest illegal behaviour, it should refer the news organisation to the police or any other relevant statutory powers. And punitive powers mean the power to fine.

The new regulatory system needs to sound in the pocket of proprietors. There are several ways that this could happen, each of which needs to be explored: regulated newsrooms could be guaranteed zero-rated VAT on their products, both in print and in digital; they could sign a commercial contract binding themselves into the new arrangement; or the advertising industry, which itself boasts the Advertising Standards Authority, could be persuaded to agree to a reciprocal arrangement in which publishers and advertisers support each other’s codes and regulators. The link with advertising, crucially, would apply to internet sites seeking to make money.

There could be other incentives worth exploring. The new regulator might provide a mechanism to resolve disputes on issues in libel law, as well as privacy. This could provide easy access to quick remedies and, for all sides, cheaper justice.

The public interest
These measures, for all their advantages, carry a danger that Lord Justice Leveson will wish to avoid. They could produce a chilling effect on press freedom, empowering only the company with bottomless pockets and the rich individual with a limitless appetite for complaints. So it is important that the inquiry also provide a robust defence for reporting in the public interest.

In the absence of a First Amendment — the part of the US Constitution that forbids Congress from abridging freedom of the press — the principle of being able to report and comment has a great tradition in Britain but little legal protection.

Journalists have undermined their own case by failing, very often, even to attempt to make the public interest case for the stories that they publish. Lord Justice Leveson has every right to insist that in future they do.

It will always be a matter of judgment whether, say, Sir Fred Goodwin’s affair with someone who worked for him at RBS was an important story about his conduct as a chief executive or nobody’s business but his, hers and his family’s. An editor must make that judgment and be able to defend it, if necessary, to a regulator or a court, balancing the power and influence of the individual concerned against the level of intrusion and the methods used.

It is essential that the press be given greater power to safeguard freedom of expression through a more widely enforceable public interest defence. The public interest does not simply mean interesting to the public, but something in which the public has an interest, something in which the public has a stake. Journalists should be able to make a public interest defence when they report criminal activity or threats to national and local security; when they try to expose corruption, dishonesty, hypocrisy and ethical wrongdoing; when they reveal the true behaviour of organisations, institutions and individuals of power and influence; and when they enable the public to make more informed decisions about their lives.

Lord Justice Leveson must see that this public interest defence applies to all laws that affect information gathering. As things stand, there is a public interest defence to blagging, but not hacking; to privacy infringements, but not bribery.

Looking back over the past decade, it is clear that the biggest failing of the press has been to tell its readers too little, not too much. In examining the alleged threat posed by Iraq in the run-up to war, in reporting the calamitous risks taken by banks before the financial crisis and in understanding the dysfunction at the heart of British government for much of the decade, newspapers did not delve nearly deeply enough. The greatest danger today is that the phone-hacking scandal results in a new set of rules that misses the bigger point. The public deserve to know more, not less.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Rupert Murdoch seems to have something of a love/hate affair with the UK. On one hand, its the place where he made his legend, and his love for his British newspapers seems to go far beyond all economic sense.

Way back in July, LeftFoodForward posted 25 questions for Salmond online. The questions are clearly directed at the SNP's relationship with News Corp — with details of meetings with James Murdoch demanded, amongst other details about advertising and funding requested. Salmond initially balked at responding.

Eventually, under pressure from multiple sources, Salmond released some of his correspondence with Murdoch. It turned out to be especially fawning: "I hope that News International goes from strength to strength," he said in one correspondence. Critics described it as a "four year campaign" to "seduce Rupert Murdoch"....read more

It must be so delightful being a Guardian journalist. Always being right. Always being morally superior.

They have undoubtedly broken some fantastic, important stories, such as Trafigura, the Wiki-leaks cable dump, and phone hacking, but this in turn has had the effect of lacing their material with a dose of arrogance; an air of the untouchable. Too often, the Guardian themselves try to be the story - look at the books from Guardian hacks about Wiki-leaks, for example.

This is a dangerous mind-set to have for any organisation whose role is meant to be questioning those in power.

All newspapers try to write eye catching, agenda setting stories; that is how they sell papers and survive. However, there is a smugness about Guardian journalists; an unchallengeable assertion that their angle is the right, and only acceptable one that leaves a slightly more bitter taste in the mouth than others. Just follow a few of them on Twitter if you don’t believe me. You’ll soon see what I mean.

The truth is that the Guardian is hardly perfect. Having instigated the closure of the News of the World, and the resulting loss of 300 jobs, it has transpired that people working for the NOTW did not cause the deletion that gave the Dowler parents false hope.

Was there an ounce of humility from the Editor-In-Chief Alan Rusbridger, or Nick Davies, whose by-line adorns the story? Not a bit of it. There was excuse after excuse, a defensive piece by Davies, and a note in the corrections and clarifications column. Given that this was a game changing, front page story, this hardly constitutes the like-for-like apology so often demanded by Guardianistas....read more

The Express Were Publishing The Investigation and The Involvement Of The McCanns ! Desmond DID NOT libel The McCanns As They Very Well Know BUT The FUND Hired Carter Ruck AND The Express Were On Their Own !

The Damning Report That Made The McCanns ARGUIDOS - Suspects In the Disappearance And Death Of Their Daughter Madeleine

The article does not say but I would imagine the un-named child killer is Ian Huntley

News Corp. (NWSA)for the first time publicly detailed bribery by a journalist at its now-defunct News of the World, telling a court that a former editor agreed to pay a prison guard to get a story about a child killer.

Matt Nixson, a features editor for five years at the News of the World, told a reporter in a March 7, 2009, e-mail to pay 750 pounds ($1,150) to the guard for details about a man who murdered two girls. Nixson then said to “chuck her some more money later” since she wanted 1,000 pounds, News Corp. said in court papers filed Dec. 13 in London and made public yesterday.

The disclosure is part of the company’s defense in Nixson’s lawsuit claiming he was wrongfully fired from News Corp.’s Sun tabloid, where he last worked, as the company sought to contain a phone-hacking scandal. News Corp. closed the News of the World in July after it was revealed it hacked into the voice mail of a different murdered schoolgirl in 2002.

David PilditchHe did so by reminding us, once again, that the Madeleine McCann Affair is a psychological phenomenon as much as a legal one.

2011, remember, was when we got the words out of the couple’s own mouths and were able to come to a final conclusion, not just a view, on their veracity. That veracity is the foundation of the abduction claim and the year saw it demolished.To recap:

The repeated claims by Gerry McCann in his 2007 “blog” that he and his wife were not suspected of involvement by the Portuguese police in the disappearance were demonstrated as proven lies, as the date evidence of the police interviews in Madeleine now shows.

Kate McCann herself admitted in Madeleine that they had lied (page 206) to the media about the police investigation and attempted to change the untruthful story that she had illegally leaked to the media (Lori Campbell) about a supposed deal offer by the Portuguese police.

Which confirmed the previous evidence of:

The Lisbon court statement by the prosecutor Menezes in January 2010 in which he asserted that the group of nine, which included the parents, “had not told the truth” about the circumstances of their checking.

And was followed by:

The materially misleading evidence under oath to the Leveson inquiry given by Gerry McCann as to the origins of the “media pack” in Praia da Luz and his relationship with the Press Complaints Commission.

The Cretan Liars

All this evidence derives from irrefutable sources, not the deniable newspaper garbage and forum myths of the past five years. It won’t be challenged by McCann supporters because it is unchallengeable.The blogs were direct communications to the public from Gerry McCann via his site, not the media; Madeleine, of course, is on-the-record primary source material which she attests (Page 1) to be the truth; Menezes’s statement, unlike his unsworn material in the case summary, is on-oath judicial record; Gerry McCann’s statements, also on oath, are now in the public arena.

It all amounts to this: we did not tell the truth to the police about the circumstances of the evening of May 3 2007; we lied to the public about our role in the police investigation of summer 2007; when tested under oath at the Leveson inquiry our version of events was found, once again, to be untruthful.We are also the source of the abduction claim. A pretty Cretan Liar paradox for Scotland Yard!

Here come de judge

There is no reason for Leveson to know much about this. And none at all for him to be suspicious of the pair. But Leveson wasn’t just sympathetic to Kate and Gerry McCann: he went out of his way to make a demonstration of his emotional solidarity with the parents, addressing them as he might address two terminally ill grandchildren. Later, by word and deed (impatient tossing of his head, that repulsive lower-lipped sneer) he contemptuously dismissed as “tittle-tattle” evidence of the reports reaching the UK about the progress of the police investigation. The witness he patronised and scorned so loftily, the manifestly decent and reliable —for a journalist— David Pilditch, made it quite clear that his reports had accurately reflected police thinking at the time and had been run by Clarence Mitchell (busy briefing the press against the police daily at the time, according to Pilditch) in advance of submission.

Leveson was having none of it, turning away in another now-familiar contemptuous gesture, that of the rude and grumpy stage husband sniffing and then rejecting his wife’s smelly and unpleasant meal. In fact this was perhaps the only time when he almost lost control of the tribunal since an agitated counsel for the celebrities was at once on his feet, anxious to refute Pilditch’s statement that the case papers confirmed his claims.

The judge, confronted by David Sherborne and the disturbingly thick sheaf of McCann provided questions under his arm, was stuck, clearly seeing the possibility of a derailment and a mini-McCann trial within an inquiry. He became embroiled in debate before, finally, allowing Sherborne to make a statement but not examine the witness nor produce his evidence —the worst of both worlds. It was an unseemly incident but who was to blame other than Leveson himself? He had derailed matters by ostentatiously demonstrating his emotions — obviously derived from prima facie superficial knowledge gained outside the court, not from the proceedings— rather than sticking to the proceedings themselves.

Judges know very well the importance of their own attitudes and body language, both because they are schooled and warned about them on appointment to the judiciary and because they have witnessed —and deliberately exploited— their impact in open court. There is all the difference in the world between a Lord Justice Sneerson in a criminal case stating “the witness is clearly telling the truth” and using the same words with a raised eyebrow and a crooked smile—both of which, of course, pass clean under the transcript radar and can never be appealed. Leveson knows it yet, unlike counsel for the inquiry Day,who was sympathetic, courteous but largely neutral to the pair, he couldn’t resist making a demonstration of his feelings. From the bench about an open case!

So why did he do it?

Why? Well, there are plenty of interpretations. Starting with the possibility that, underneath the fierce intellect, lurks a self-important and at times rather noxious—watch that pendulous lip!— little bully with his own certainties and without much knowledge of the real world beyond the confines of his court. Like most judges in fact.

And then at the other end, of course, sigh, wilt, yawn, we have the Department of Easy Answers conspiracy version: Leveson is being over-nice to the McCanns as part of the protective screen provided by the Establishment. As we said at the beginning, we lean towards the psychological answer and the one that has always been the greatest ally of the parents: decent people, not the operators who surround the McCanns like flies on vomit, but the mainly decent, mainly pretty intelligent people in the public who don’t study the case in detail share a common, if only half-conscious, attitude to the case: its unthinkability.

To study the case rather than skim the headlines is to be drawn in to murky and uncomfortable waters. The possibility of infanticide, even—horribile dictu— within a group, runs so perilously close to our western taboos that most people not only do not wish to contemplate it but refuse even to consider its contemplation, partly because to do so would be a betrayal of our normal sympathy for a stricken pair brought close to us by the media.

Discussing it makes them, as many of us have witnessed, acutely uncomfortable, even physically so —just like the judge in fact. Once the evidence in such taboo-touching cases is laid out in its full horror within courtroom walls then people will accept it, often with a shudder. But unless there is cast-iron evidence of guilt we think most people, like Lord Justice Leveson, simply find its contemplation revolting.

Us and Them

Unlike S.Amaral and some others perhaps, we haven’t the slightest doubt that Leveson, despite his absurd performance, would preside fairly over any trial of the McCanns. Given our own view of the case—and this is the essential gulf between us and the hidden-handers—we worry not about judges and other “thems” but about juries, i.e. us. In the confines of the jury room people like us will still want that “cast-iron evidence of guilt” before facing the possibly unthinkable: it wasn’t there in 2007, as the prosecutors knew, and it isn’t there now.

Short of the cast iron making a hefty appearance we can see only one possible threat to this complex public reaction, what we might call the drip, drip, drip effect. All-or-nothing, the unthinkable, suits the McCanns. Yet the slow accumulation over time of evidence not of the unthinkable but of a vastly lower level of dishonesty, such as significant and persistent lying, which the Bureau attempts to publicise, or the assiduous repetition of mere accident which S.Amaral cleverly conveys, could gradually feed its way into public attitudes. And thence even to the jury room. Who knows, if Scotland Yard or some other force turn up light aluminium, rather than iron, one day such attempts might tip the balance.

The lawyers for the McCanns know this perfectly well which is why their main aim in the UK is always to prevent the drip, drip, drip, getting to a wider audience than that of the net and us net nutters. It began with “expunging”, remember?

Pass it on

As always the Bureau is glad to help: we did not tell the truth to the police about the circumstances of the evening of May 3 2007; we lied to the public about our role in the police investigation of summer 2007; when tested under oath at the Leveson inquiry our version of events was found, once again, to be untruthful.

Mirror Mirror on the wall who is the wittiest of them all?
Piers Morgan and Dominic Mohan tried desperately to out-diva one another at last night's Princess Margaret Awards for Fleet Street's finest flyers, worst showbiz interviews and all round cock-ups. The Sun's showbiz editor Mohan gallantly nominated Mirror editor Morgan for the worst photo-opportunity award for his supersonic schmoozing of Sting on the Concorde relaunch flight, which made the front page of the Mirror. Fair enough, thought Monkey, remembering Morgan's gratified grin as he received champagne from the former Police frontman. But, as Morgan pointed out: "At least Sting is a full 10 years younger than your contacts." Mohan one, Morgan one.

What's the story
But Mohan couldn't resist a dig at his elderly rivals at the Mirror congratulating the paper's showbusiness editor, Kevin O'Sullivan, for making it out for "only the third time this year" to a club, "a club, Kevin, you know those places where you pick up stories".

Ring, a ring a story
How appropriate that the most glamourous event in the showbusiness calender should be sponsored by a phone company. Mohan went on to thank "Vodafone's lack of security" for the Mirror's showbusiness exclusives. Whatever does he mean?

Kelvin MacKenzie, who edited The Sun from 1981 to 1994, told the Leveson Inquiry the newspaper has taken a "more cautious" approach since the 1980s.

He said: "Towards the end of my time as editor I was less bullish than I was, perhaps, during the 80s."

Mr MacKenzie told the inquiry: "The editors are more cautious and were probably right to be cautious."

He went on to say The Sun's owner Rupert Murdoch was furious when he found out the newspaper was to pay £1 million in damages to Elton John after a story claimed the singer had hired rent boys.

"Let's put it this way, " he said "He wasn't pleased."

The former editor said he remembered sending the media mogul a fax, then receiving a 40-minute phone call of "non-stop abuse".

The proceedings were held up shortly into Mr MacKenzie's evidence, as a man shouted across the courtroom: "Ask him about Michael Stone."

Lord Justice Leveson told the man to stop, or he would be asked to leave.

The man replied: "Am I in contempt?"

Lord Leveson said: "I'm not going into that."

After the brief interruption Mr MacKenzie stood by comments he made in a Leveson Inquiry seminar in October, when he said: "My view was that if it sounded right it was probably right and therefore we should lob it in."

Asked today by Robert Jay QC, counsel for the Leveson Inquiry: "Do you stand by that?"

He replied: "Yes, I do."

He said that he had looked up the definition of the word "lob" in an online dictionary, and found it to mean throw "in a slow arc".

"The point I'm making is that we thought about something, and then put it in," he said.

Mr MacKenzie has previously described the press standards inquiry as "ludicrous" and suggested it is only being held because of Prime Minister David Cameron's "obsessive arse-kissing" of Rupert Murdoch.

The colourful former editor was behind a number of controversial front-page Sun headlines, including "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster" and "Gotcha" about the sinking of the Argentine warship General Belgrano during the Falklands War in May 1982.